Hyderabad, Vijayawada drive 59.5% AI jobs
- LinkedIn’s AI Labor Market Report 2026 said India’s AI engineering hiring rose 59.5% year over year, with Hyderabad and Vijayawada posting standout gains. - Hyderabad’s AI hiring climbed 51%, Vijayawada rose 45.5%, and manufacturing AI talent expanded fourfold to 2% of the workforce in 2025. - Demand is spreading beyond Bengaluru as firms seek applied AI skills such as agents and prompting. (indianexpress.com)
India’s AI hiring boom is no longer centered on Bengaluru alone. LinkedIn said AI engineering hiring in India rose 59.5% year over year, the fastest growth among the markets it studied. (indianexpress.com) Hyderabad recorded a 51% rise in AI hiring, while Vijayawada posted 45.5% growth, according to LinkedIn’s AI Labor Market Report 2026. The report was published on April 24 and highlighted a wider spread of demand beyond India’s biggest tech hubs. (indianexpress.com) (financialexpressb2b.com) Bengaluru still anchors India’s AI market, and LinkedIn said about 3% of the city’s members hold AI engineering talent, a level it compared with San Francisco and Cambridge. The change is that faster percentage growth is now showing up in secondary cities. (indianexpress.com) Large enterprises remain the biggest employers of AI talent because they can fund infrastructure, governance, and large-scale deployment. LinkedIn also said small and mid-sized businesses are hiring more, acting as a bridge between early experiments and broader commercial use. (indianexpress.com 1) (indianexpress.com 2) The skills in demand are increasingly practical rather than theoretical. LinkedIn’s Malai Lakshmanan said applied tools tied to deployment, including AI agents and productivity tools, are growing strongly. (financialexpressb2b.com) (indianexpress.com) Among smaller businesses, LinkedIn identified AI Agents, AI Productivity tools, Azure AI Studio, Intelligent Agents, and Automated Feature Engineering as fast-growing skills. In manufacturing, the report said AI Agents and AI Prompting are becoming important for hiring. (financialexpressb2b.com) (indianexpress.com) Manufacturing is one of the clearest signs that AI hiring is moving beyond software services. LinkedIn said AI engineering talent in Indian manufacturing expanded fourfold and reached 2% of the workforce in 2025. (indianexpress.com) (financialexpressb2b.com) The report’s through line is geographic spread plus more applied work. India still has a dominant AI hub in Bengaluru, but the next wave of hiring is showing up in places like Hyderabad and Vijayawada where companies are turning experiments into operating jobs. (indianexpress.com 1) (indianexpress.com 2)
